CASE STUDY
MetricStream
Customer
A TOP AIRLINE COMPANY
Benefits
Systematic and consistent audit process across busi-
ness units, divisions, global locations, and external
suppliers
Accelerated the audit process, improved communi-
cation and teamwork on complex audit processes
across departments and functional areas
Eliminated audit errors and inconsistencies with a
standardized data collection and analysis process
across the enterprise
Realized significant cost saving and efficiencies up
to 20-30% in its entire operations. Decision making
process was streamlined and real-time
Single auditing solution for multiple auditing require-
ments such as regulatory compliance, Internal Evalu-
ation Programs, Standards Observation (LSO), Code
share Audit Program, Supplier / Vendor Audits, OSHA
,Maintenance Audits , Station audits
SAFETY AND OPERATIONAL AUDIT SOLUTION FOR AN AIRLINE
Overview
This MetricStream customer is a major airline of the United States and one of the world’s largest
airline in passenger miles transported, fleet size, operating revenues. As one of the largest airlines the
company provides scheduled jet service to hundreds destinations world wide. With such scale of op-
erations, having effective quality and safety management systems with necessary control framework
is critical for the company to ensure safety of the passengers and meeting regulatory compliance
requirements. The quality, risk and compliance processes are supported by a comprehensive audit
program to ensure operating departments comply with applicable regulatory requirements and policies
and procedures. To achieve this objective the audit department members conduct a variety of audits
of all internal departments, programs and processes.
Challenge
The customer was facing severe challenge to keep up and manage requirements of multiple regula-
tions, mandates and standards by the FAA, IOSA, and other regulatory bodies. The increasingly com-
plex compliance programs for which auditing processes were not well integrated and handled with
a heterogeneous set of auditing tools and systems were making it difficult to cope with increasing
scrutiny and rising reporting requirements. The customer realized that a upgrade in auditing systems
and nfrastructure was necessary to improve process efficiencies, shorten audit cycle times and the
reduce costs through effective utilization of resources.
14 CFR Sec. 121.373., Continuous Analysis and Surveillance System (CASS), mandate requires
airlines to have a CASS Audit System to provide continuous surveillance of the maintenance system
to assure compliance with applicable manuals and regulations. CASS audits are also important for the
airline for a systematic and independent examination of processes and systems to verify whether they
are implemented effectively and suitable to achieve desired objectives.
The Air Transportation Oversight System (ATOS) from FAA requires airlines to adopt a system for to
ensure its operating systems comply with regulations and safety standards as well as the six (6) Safe-
ty Attributes, i.e., Responsibility, Authority, Procedures, Control, Process Measurement and Interfaces.
Airline is expected to have risk management processes defined and air carrier’s operating systems
produces intended results, including mitigation or control of hazards and associated risks.
Under regulatory requirements, the airline also has to measure effectiveness and performance of
maintenance operational processes through Maintenance and Engineering (M&E) audits. To comply
with ATOS requirements, the airline has to adopt an audit management system which can help in
identifying risk and manage at the audit level, provide root cause analysis capabilities for deviations
or discrepancies found during audits, integrate with Corrective and Preventative Actions with audit
related deviations and provide risk assessment and mitigation capabilities for safety risks. Such man-
dates required a seamless integration between safety, quality and risk management programs and the
localized point-applications being used to manage data and processes were not designed for providing
such an integrated view.
Solutions
The airlines started looking for an integrated audit management solution that would offer a simple
interface as the data entry during some audits could require hundred of filed and parameters to be
captured. . The customer wanted to implement a single audit solution for its enterprise-wide auditing
requirements for multiple regulations, mandates and standards such as 14 CFR 121.373, AC 120-59,
AC 120-79, DOD QSR, IOSA, OSHA 29 CFR 1910.120, Maintenance Audits, Station Audits and Internal
Evaluation Program - that includes audit of all major functional departments involved in the airline’s
Airworthiness, Flight and Ground Operations programs.
In addition to regulatory pressures, the airline was facing soaring direct and indirect costs of the
manual audit process. Senior management was having challenges in decision-making process due to
lack of in-depth analysis and decision support based on audit data from ATOS and Maintenance and
Engineering. Without an integrated audit system, auditors were dependent on papers and Word or
Excel files to document, analyze and present audit results.
MetricStream
Why MetricStream
Enterprise-wide Deployment: The MetricStream
solution allowed customer to consolidate audits
globally across divisions & branches. The solution
enabled enterprise-wide deployment of audit manage-
ment and manage the complete audit process such
as risk assessment, audit planning and scheduling,
development of standard audit plans and checklists,
field data collection, development of audit reports and
recommendations, review of audit by auditees and
program management of audit recommendations and
remediation.
Scope and Extensibility of Solution: The solution
provided the flexibility to support all types of audits,
including Line Observation Safety, Internal Evaluation
Program, Flight Safety, Ground Safety, Maintenance
Safety & Compliance, Maintenance & Engineering,
Quality Assurance, Codeshare Safety Oversight
Program, System Safety & Analysis, Occupational
Safety, Safety and Quality Evaluations. The airline
was able to extend the audit management solution for
subcontractors and suppliers audits also.
Offline Capability: The MetricStream Platform
provides a unique offline briefcase capability that
allows auditors to perform their tasks at remote field
sites without access to the corporate network. This
helped the airline auditors to perform field audits
before flight take-offs, remote audits for maintenance
and engineering and finally synchronize all data in
corporate audit system.
For more information, visit
www.metricstream.com
Copyright 2011. All Rights Reserved.
The airline needed functional capabilities such as hierarchical system access for users, flexible audit
schedules, audit resource management and capability to create checklists for compliance or ad-hoc
operational audits.
The airline was looking for a risk-based audit system with checklist questions having capability of
weighted scoring system based on probability and severity at the individual audit finding level and
the overall audit level. The system should support functionality to send emails automatically in audit
workflow such as notification to auditor auditee, overdue task alerts etc. Audit system was expected
to have integrated Corrective Action Records (CARs) functionality.
MetricStream has delivered a comprehensive audit management solution to the airlines to support
enterprise-wide audit management, risk assessments, remediation, incident management, correc-
tive action, reporting, dashboards and offline access requirements. The scope of the project includes
streamlining the audit cycle through a complete on-line audit workflow, including creation, approval,
and scheduling documentation of audit results and corrective actions and closed-loop corrective
action system and paperless transmission of corrective action requests. The solution manages the
end-to-end checklist data, audit data, corrective action requests data and customer data and provides
alerts by a monitoring system directly to the end user via a select communication medium (i.e. e-mail,
pager, etc).
After extensive evaluation of various audit management solutions on the market, the company
selected MetricStream because the solution provided the flexibility to support all types of audits,
including Line Observation Safety, Internal Evaluation Program, Flight Safety, Ground Safety, Mainte-
nance Safety & Compliance, Maintenance & Engineering, Quality Assurance, Codeshare Safety Quality
Evaluations. The airline was able to extend the audit management solution for subcontractors and sup-
pliers audits also. The MetricStream Audit solution offered an integrated and flexible risk management
framework for identifying hazards, analyzing and assessing safety sheet risks, defining controls for
risks and finally managing risk controls through audits.
The MetricStream solution allows customer to consolidate audits globally across divisions & branch-
es. The solution provides end-to-end functionality for managing the complete audit process including:
risk assessment, audit planning and scheduling, development of standard audit plans and checklists,
field data collection, development of audit reports and recommendations, review of audit by auditees
and company management and program management of audit recommendations and remediation.
The MetricStream Platform provides a unique offline briefcase capability that allows auditors to
perform their tasks at remote field sites without access to the corporate network. Key functionalities
such as conducting audits and reviewing action items has been made available on notebook comput-
ers and handheld devices even when they are offline and cannot access the network. The data is
recorded in exactly that same manner as when the application is online and synchronized with the
central repository when the network is accessible.